New Delhi
The Congress on Friday said the White Paper put out by the government is a “hatchet job” and a “white lie” paper intended to damn the previous government and hide the present government’s “broken promises, monumental failures and betrayal of the poor”.
The statement, authored by former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, said every government builds on the work of the predecessor governments. “This fundamental truth has escaped the authors of the white-lie paper,” he said, adding that had it not been for Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues, India would not be a parliamentary democracy.
Unbiased assessment
He said a fair and unbiased assessment of any period will not start arbitrarily with 2004 and end abruptly in 2014. It would have assessed a reasonable period before 2004 and included a reasonable period after 2014. Chidambaram pointed out that no government on assuming office had made “wild promises” like 2 crore jobs in a year, bringing back black money stashed abroad in 100 days, ₹15 lakh in the account of every Indian, petrol/diesel at ₹35 a litre. He said these promises were made and broken without an expression of regret.
Chidambaram gave data to analyse the comparative performance of the UPA and the NDA. According to the figures provided by the Congress leader, the GDP growth rate during the UPA years was 7.46 per cent in the old series and 6.7 per cent in the new series as compared to 5.9 per cent of the BJP years.
Fiscal deficit in the terminal year of the UPA was 4.5 per cent as compared to 5.8 per cent of the BJP. National debt in the terminal year of the UPA was ₹568.6 lakh crore as compared to ₹173.3 lakh crore of the BJP. Debt to GDP ratio was 52 per cent during the UPA years as compared to 58 per cent of the BJP. Farm wages growth was 4.1 per cent as compared to 1.3 per cent of the BJP years.